Author Topic: 6 View discussed (Read 812 times)

F4UDOA · « **on:** April 15, 2003, 10:15:38 AM »

Heya's,

I have had some conversations with people on that other simm recently concerning the difference btween the more generous 6 view alloted in AH or the very restricted 6 view in brand X.

After displaying several pictures and debating back and forth I stumbled onto a quote from a Mr. Boone T. Guyton (primary test pilot for the F4U Corsair) in the 1944 Report of Joint Fighters Conferance.

From page 98

Quote

On the F4U-4 a proposed armor protection behined the pilot that we have is .50 caliber protection and retains the same that we had before; it will have the bulged canopy, so you can see to the virtical tail fin."

From what I can tell AH has it pretty much right in regards to the F4U 6 view.

SELECTOR · « **Reply #1 on:** April 15, 2003, 05:56:55 PM »

ok this subject has come up over and over again..
my thoughts...
1st off the 6 view in AH is a bit arcade, im sure everyone agrees on that..
ok , imagin your in a real aircraft, in the middle of a dog fight, traveling at 300+ mph your looking around for the enemy, you spot him on your 6 , you pull a highG turn.. what happenes if your looking over your shoulder at the time..you snap your neck..

6 view should be G restricted..

MANDOBLE · « **Reply #2 on:** April 15, 2003, 07:29:04 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by SELECTOR
6 view should be G restricted..

Any view, not only six. It is the angle you can move your head from an initial possition to a final possition during a hi-G turn. Looking left and then right may be as hard as looking forward and then rearwar in that situation.

F4UDOA · « **Reply #3 on:** April 15, 2003, 08:59:06 PM »

Based on what selector?

Snap your neck?

I flew at Air Combat USA and pulled 4+G's sustained with my head bent straight back trying to track a bogie through several loops. It never physically hurt except my eyes and my brain. My brain fell out of my head when I landed but my neck felt fine.

Also it should be noted that while I was fighting for my life making all kinds of funny sounds the pilot next to me who had flown a million dogfights was pratically napping. He felt nothing at all and he was tracking the same target I was.

I honestly think when the Cheif test pilot of a WW2 aircraft says that you can see the virtical fin from the cockpit you can pretty much believe it. It was not in his best interest to lie while standing in a room full of combat pilots that fly his airplane.

BTW in the same meeting where Mr. Guyton makes his statement about the F4U 6 view a Mustang pilot mentions he can see his right horizontal stab over his left shoulder.

Kweassa · « **Reply #4 on:** April 15, 2003, 09:34:03 PM »

It's 'the way you see it', that's in doubt.

Can you crank your neck back and see the vert stab? - Probably.

Does that mean you get a wide-screen panoramic 6-view which covers the left fuselage rear + direct-6 + right fuselage rear? - I don't think so.

I would like to have the current 6-view we have, yes, but divide them into left half and right half, so you get only one at a time.

Shane · « **Reply #5 on:** April 15, 2003, 09:45:44 PM »

i think the "restrict the views" crowd under estimates the ability of the human neck and brain/eye coordination. you *can* move your head damn rapidly, much faster than the pan mode. it takes a fraction of a second to look over one shoulder to the other and you can shift your torso a bit to be able to get a pretty good view all around. don't underestimate adrenline, either, especialy in combat situations - something that can't truly be modeled, just as fatigue (which is subjective in nature) can't.

stop trying to squeak out little artificially perceived edges and simply learn to fly as presented.

Kweassa · « **Reply #6 on:** April 15, 2003, 10:07:10 PM »

Think of it this way. Try closing your left eye and look left with only the right eye. Can you see things? Sure, you do. But can you really 'see/focus' on them with any accuracy?

In boxing, when for some reason one of the your eyes are out of function(like blood getting into that eye..), the opponent tries to slip into the side of the bad eye. You can see his body mass move, and detect large movements with peripheral vision. However you're not gonna see a fast punch coming in when he keeps moving to the closed eye. You can't focus on the point with just your right eye.

So, is someone gonna be able to see a friendly wingman looming around his 5 O'c from distances like 30 yards, when he looks left over his shoulder and 'sees' towards direction of the right horiz stab? - Probably.

Is he gonna be able to see a hostile enemy coming in at his 5 O'c from distances like two thousand yards, when he looks left over his shoulder and 'sees' towards direction of the right horiz stab? - I think not.

.........

The "the human neck and brain/eye coordination" is over-hyped.

- Your eyes may see something, but if its in an angle difficult to focus, your brain's confusion is sometimes very difficult to handle. It actively throws away the info registered that cannot be translated - people refer to this phenomenon in more simple term as 'slipped concentration'.

- Your eyes may see something, but if it is already focused in on something, the rest of the peripheral info(the 'periphery' is increased when the eye focuses on a single point) are either disregarded or pushed away from the priorities where your brain reminds you to 'update the info' - people call this 'target fixation'

- If your brain realizes that looking at a certain angle will not be efficient, it immediately compells you to turn the neck the other way around, so it has clear vision.

A vision which is not clear, which cannot be grasped directly via image, due to various reasons causes uncomfortable feelings, and sometimes can even cause pain. Such unclear info is often ignored or not realized - for the sake of your mind.

.......

And you're saying that a pilot can just look one side of the shoulder and immeditely get a clear picture of the things going on behind him?

Karnak · « **Reply #7 on:** April 15, 2003, 10:23:51 PM »

No, no. You don't understand. Pilots were strapped in so tight they couldn't see the rear 135 degrees and their vision was so bad that a no icons environment is vastly more realistic than any environment with icons.

Bring on the "realism".

TimRas · « **Reply #8 on:** April 15, 2003, 11:39:27 PM »

In many photos of (mainly US and British) fighters I have seen rear view mirrors installed on top of the windshield. As I understand they were field modifications, but still very common. Despite their somewhat limited view they must have been quite useful.

F4UDOA · « **Reply #9 on:** April 16, 2003, 09:56:02 AM »

I think we are getting off base here.

Either you can turn your head to see the Virtical fin or you can't.

Getting into what the human brain can proccess or not is not relavent at all because we can't be put under G load while flying Aces High. And in reality while I was under G load turning my head was never a problem. Ultimately eyesight is a huge factor in determining the success of a fighterpilot. However that is not modeled in AH unless you want everybody to go get an eye exam and send the results to HTC so we can all have our own personal FE built for us.

Karnak,

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not but I don't think shoulder straps ever prevented a pilot in WW2 from checking his 6 view more than once.

I would highly reccomend that people order a copy of the 1944 Report on Joint Fighter Conferance. It is not a book written by an author. It is the minutes of a meeting held in 1944 to discuss fighter desgn with Combat Pilots, Contractors both British and American. They discuss at length the ability of a pilot to check his 6 view. Based on this I think it is very clear that you could see at least as much over your left and right shoulder as you do in AH. The view straight back over you head may be out of wack but that is due to the lack of rear view mirrors.

Kweassa · « **Reply #10 on:** April 16, 2003, 11:16:55 AM »

Quote

They discuss at length the ability of a pilot to check his 6 view. Based on this I think it is very clear that you could see at least as much over your left and right shoulder as you do in AH. The view straight back over you head may be out of wack but that is due to the lack of rear view mirrors.

Note the phrase you used:

'you could see at least as much over your left and right shoulder as you do in AH'.

I agree on that part.

Yes, I also think you can see over your left and right shoulder as you do in AH. Left and right - respectively. Not at the same time.

That 'out of wack' part is the very essence of the complaints behind us 'realism folk', and it has nothing to do with the 6-view mirrors. 6-view mirrors would provide only about 30~40% of the information we currently get when we look at 6 O'c. It's clearly an overcompensation.

The lack of mirrors being mentioned as a just reason behind current 6-views is like saying the no-cockpit mode is a compensation for the limits of 2D rendering a computer can provide. (There actually are people who do argue that the no-cockpit view is more realistic - for the reason it is a compensation for the lack of depth perception and peripheral vision)

Just divide the current 6-views into two, so we have a 'look over right shoulder 6-view' and a 'look over left shoulder 6-view' - so that the pilot has to check both sides consciously to get a full grasp of the things happening behind his plane, and us 'realism folk' would be satisfied.

Vermillion · « **Reply #11 on:** April 16, 2003, 11:42:49 AM »

This is an old old tired arguement.

For those of you that think you can't look directly back to the 6 o'clock, I would recommend going to Air Combat USA, Warbirds Adventures (where I flew), or some other such event where you can fly under G loads and try it for yourself.

Because 99% of the "realistic" crowd is talking out of their arses and has no clue.

F4UDOA · « **Reply #12 on:** April 16, 2003, 12:08:06 PM »

Verm,

True, true. I never had such a bad headache in my life after we hit the ground but I have never been so alive as when I was stalling in the top of a 4G loop. In the book "F4U Action and accidents" By Fred Bletchman he mentions that the G's were more harsh on him at AirCombat USA than in the F4U during his tour in Korea. He does not say why only that he had several hundred micro tears in his cornea after flying at ACUSA.

Kaweassa,

I have no problem with limiting the view somewhat into different sectors of view like left, right and straight back. But the field of view would essentially remain the same. The dead 6 view is really your rear view mirror. In the F4U it is not nearly as liberal as say the 109 (This is not axis vrs allies) which gives you an above the conopy view.

Just so long as we don't do the WB3 no 6 view and a 45 degree view out the window. And oh yeah, the 3 second head turn.

Karnak · « **Reply #13 on:** April 16, 2003, 01:59:33 PM »

F4UDOA,

Sorry. I was being very sarcastic.

I'm a bit fed up with the "realism" fanatics and was mocking some of their common statements. It seems that anything that makes it harder is more realistic in their minds. They have an overblown idea of the competence of the pilots that flew these aircraft. We're not talking about guys with 10 or 20 years of training here. Mostly were talking about kids around 20 years old who, while brave, were not super human. These machines were meant to be fought in, not fought.

The best of these fighters worked so that once you had combat settings you simply flew the aircraft and worried about tactics, not fiddling with trim, mixtrue and prop pitch in the middle of a fight. I know that both the Mustang and Spitfire worked that way. A well designed fighter reduced the pilot's workload in combat as much as possible.

As to the visibility issue, well, WWIIOL and WBIII are rediculesly limited. I think AH is a bit too generous on some aircraft.

AtmkRstr · « **Reply #14 on:** April 17, 2003, 09:01:04 AM »

Easiest solution is to remove the rear view. You can still see just as much by cycling back-left and back-right, but it feels more realistic. (maybe only remove rear view online) The idea of seeing your entire rear view comfortably in combat without cycling your head back and forth sounds a bit far fetched. Though I've never sat in a fighter, it's easy to simulate in your desk chair by planting your shoulders to the back of the seat as if you were straped in and twisting your neck only. In a P51D, I'd be able to see my right horizontal stabilizer over my left shoulder, but only with one eye - hardly good enough to track cons that are more than 100m away. Also note that your eye's blind spot is in that area. The vert stabilizer would be the limit of my binocular vision.

Atleast we don't have the IL-2 kind of views where you rotate your eyeballs in their sockets rather than rotate your head. Unfortunatly, the default AH head positions have the same problem.